Under Deconstruction

As I posted earlier, I am leaving Blogger because of their decision to start censoring blogs at the request of governments that do not allow free speech in their countries. I will be moving to Wordpress.com, which has refused to collaborate with countries that deny their citizens basic human rights.

While I work on setting up my new blog I will turn off comments here so that I don't lose any during the move. I'll post again with the new address when everything is up and ready.

Can’t decide which book to read in the bathtub?

How about all of them?

Vanessa Mancini: Bathing in Knowledge.

via @BookPatrol

British Library seeks to acquire Europe’s oldest book

The British Library is trying to raise £9M to acquire what is thought to be Europe’s oldest intact book, the Anglo-Saxon St. Cuthbert Gospel. The late 7th century book still has its original red leather cover, and contains the Gospel of John. The binding is beautifully decorated and the calligraphy is as clear and beautiful as it was when it was written 1300 years ago. You can get a look at it in the video below, and contribute to the acquisition fund at the British Library website.

via @Melwyk

Duolingo knows me

Spooky.

Censorship: Coming to a blog near you!

A few days ago when I blogged about Twitter’s new country-specific censorship capability, I did not know that the platform I was blogging on had already initiated a similar program three weeks earlier. Apparently the only indication of this fact was a new help article published on January 9th. There was no official announcement, and no attempt at transparency as there is from Twitter. Google does not say what will happen to censored blogs. Will they simply be invisible or will there be a notice saying they are censored? Will Google be publishing the take-down orders they receive the way Twitter will?

In any case, what this means is that if I blog about human rights, for instance, my blog could be blocked in any number of countries, and I may never even know it. But I am even more concerned about bloggers in those countries. When Wordpress was approached by China in 2006 to censor blogs, they were also asked to hand over user information. To their credit, they refused, and Wordpress blogs are still blocked in China (though the blocks are easily circumvented). But consider the implications if China made a similar request of Google. Google, along with Twitter, has now committed to obeying local laws, even if they violate universal human rights, in exchange for permission to operate in that country. If a country like China were to make a law that a web service must not only censor but supply information on all violators, how can a web company with resources invested in that country refuse? Now add in Google’s new “privacy” policy, which amalgamates user data across almost all Google services, including Gmail, YouTube, Google+, and of course Blogger. It is conceivable that a blogger who violates some censorship law might end up having their email, the videos they watched, and their friends’ names on Google+ handed over to their government. Now a service that used to give ordinary people a voice will not only take away that voice but could potentially denounce users to governments that imprison, torture, and kill dissidents.

I was already thinking of leaving Blogger but this is definitely the last straw. I do not want my blog to be subject to censorship laws in other countries, nor do I want to support a company that carries out censorship for the sake of ever-increasing profits. I am inclined to move to Wordpress, which has already refused to censor and so is blocked in several countries (though as I said above, it is easy to circumvent those blocks and indeed Wordpress is popular in China). They even state explicitly on their website that they support freedom of speech and will not censor blogs (with the usual exceptions of spam, pornography and hate speech). The only question is whether to use Wordpress.com or self-hosted Wordpress. Since I left Typepad in 2009 I’ve gotten used to not paying for my blog, but free Wordpress.com is somewhat limited in design and widget options. Moreover, with US media companies trying to clamp down hard on copyright infringement, I may be better off locating my blog in Canada. I do like the idea of owning (or at least renting) my own little piece of cyberspace, but I’m not sure I want to deal with the technicalities of running Wordpress on my own. I will have to investigate the options, but I certainly will be moving this blog in the near future. Stay tuned…

Emerson: Enchanted Library

In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends, but they are imprisoned by an enchanter in these paper and leathern boxes; and though they know us, and have been waiting two, ten, or twenty centuries for us,—some of them,—and are eager to give us a sign, and unbosom themselves, it is the law of their limbo that they must not speak until spoken to; and as the enchanter has dressed them, like battalions of infantry, in coat and jacket of one cut, by the thousand and ten thousand, your chance of hitting on the right one is to be computed by the arithmetical rule of Permutation and Combination,—not a choice out of three caskets, but out of half a million caskets all alike. But it happens in our experience, that in this lottery there are at least fifty or a hundred blanks to a prize. It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, after losing a great deal of time among the false books, and alighting upon a few true ones which made him happy and wise, would do a right act in naming those which have been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred cities, into palaces and temples. This would be best done by those great masters of books who from time to time appear,—the Fabricii, the Seldens, Magliabecchis, Scaligers, Mirandolas, Bayles, Johnsons, whose eyes sweep the whole horizon of learning. But private readers, reading purely for love of the book, would serve us by leaving each the shortest note of what he found.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Books” in Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters

And so we have the book blog. :)

Duolingo: Mixing it up

Wouldn’t you know it, a day after I post all about Duolingo they start changing things! I’ve been working away on my lessons and it seems every time I look up I notice something new. The most obvious change is that the main page now has bolder graphics for the skill area “chips.”

It was fine before but this new design definitely makes it easier to see your progress in each skill area. As a person over 40, I have to say that bigger type and graphics is always a good thing.

There have also been changes to the web translation module. You can now see the previous sentences you’ve worked on, including your translations and the option to see other translations. This provides context at a glance, which is very convenient. It is also now possible to edit your translation after seeing other people’s answers. This is brilliant. Correcting your own work is a great way to learn.

One thing I didn’t mention in my previous post is how Duolingo mixes up the lessons and even the sentences in each lesson. You don’t progress by completing one skill and moving on to the next, like chapters in a book. After you get the basics in one skill, other skill areas open up and you are encouraged to work on them for a bit and then go back. Duolingo highlights the recommended area to work on and if you follow that path you will do a lot of bopping back and forth. This shows that the Duolingo people have really done their homework because it is precisely what the brain needs to form long-term memories and associations. The same pattern appears within each lesson. There you will be presented with a sentence to translate into English, move on to something else, and then get the previous sentence again but this time having to do the more difficult task of translating it into Spanish or listening and typing it out in Spanish. It is this element of surprise that makes the brain take notice and go to the trouble of putting that information into long-term memory. You know things are going to come up again, but you don’t know when or how, so you have to pay close attention to everything. Add to this the daily practice sessions and you have a system designed for learning success.

I can say a bit more about the social side of Duolingo now that I’ve found and followed a few people. Duolingo recommends people who are at about your level and when you follow them, your activity stream shows all of their accomplishments too. The top of the screen also shows how you rank in points and sentences translated compared to the people you follow. I think the idea is to motivate people with competition, but it doesn’t do much for me. There isn’t much emotional payoff when you are competing against total strangers whom you know nothing about and cannot interact with. I think those factors may change, though, since it appears there will be ways to connect via Twitter and Facebook, though those tools don’t seem to be fully operational yet. If it were possible to get to know people and when people I know are let into Duolingo, it might be more fun to race against them. However, I think Duolingo might get more mileage out of encouraging cooperation rather than competition. After all, part of the reason people are clamouring to get into Duolingo is because they love the idea of helping to translate the web together. Judging by all the desperate “Let me in!!” tweets directed at Duolingo, that motivation seems to be quite strong. It might be more effective to find ways for people to collaborate in their learning or translating instead of competing. I’m not sure what that would look like but I’m sure the clever people at Duolingo can figure it out!

Duolingo: First Impressions

After much begging and pleading I finally got my much coveted Duolingo invitation. In case you missed my previous post on the subject, Duolingo is a web-based application that teaches people languages by getting them to translate web pages. How this is possible will become apparent as you read on.

After playing with it for about a week my first is impression is: WOW! The user interface is absolutely flawless. Everything is clear, visually appealing, easy to navigate, and bug-free. I think the Duolingo people must be perfectionists to call this a beta. Perhaps they are not ready for a lot of traffic but the product itself looks more finished than a lot of things I’ve paid good money for.

As for the pedagogy, it is equally impressive. In the beginning you are led through a series of lessons that teach you different language skills and get you translating right away (see below—click image to enlarge).

Each lesson and translation you do earns you points and “unlocks” subsequent skill areas. You can also skip through a skill by taking a test. If you make too many mistakes you have to go back and do the lessons.

The lessons cover every aspect of language: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. They even cater to visual learners by introducing some vocabulary with pictures. However most vocabulary is presented in writing, with mouseover popups to explain each word.

Users are asked to translate from Spanish to English and from English to Spanish. When translating to Spanish it provides buttons for accented characters in case your keyboard is not set up for Spanish.

For a little variety there are multiple choice questions in both directions.

The lessons also include listening…

…and speaking.

Obviously these require the use of speakers and a microphone or headset. If you do not have a microphone you can adjust your settings so that Duolingo won’t asks you to speak. I don’t know how well it understands what I say but I find that if I speak too quickly it asks me to try again. As for Duolingo’s voice, it is a computer generated female voice with a neutral Latin American accent. It voices all the Spanish text in the lessons, not just the listening exercises, so you get a lot of listening practice. I find it quite easy to understand, though of course the intonation and rhythm are not completely natural. I can understand some Spanish already so I can’t say whether a total beginner would be able to understand it at first.

Each skill area also includes simple translation tasks from live websites. Again you can use the mouseover popups to see definitions of any words you don’t know. The more you use the popups, the less difficult the subsequent translations will be, and vice versa.

As you can see, Duolingo provides you with a link to the website so you can check the context of the sentence, and it also shows you thumbnails of any images that might be relevant. After you have taken a stab at the translation, Duolingo shows you some other people’s translations and presents you with one of them to rate.

This is where the power of crowdsourcing is unleashed. According to Duolingo’s creators, by soliciting multiple translations and then getting multiple users to rate them, Duolingo can generate translations that are good as what you would get from professional translators.

Duolingo has other features as well. It recommends daily review and if you skip a day, Duo the owl starts to cry, so it’s best to practice every day! If you make a typo or error it tells you what you did wrong, and if you make too many mistakes you have to do a little extra practice. Every time you reach a learning milestone you see a splash page with a big bright gold ribbon and hearty congratulations, with the option to share your success on Twitter or Facebook. It may not seem like much but it really is encouraging. One small detail I really appreciate is that after you type or speak a response, the focus of the page moves to the “Check” and “Continue” buttons so you can just hit Enter to proceed without having to use the mouse.

I haven’t tried Duolingo’s social features yet. The website has a section where you can ask questions that others can answer (more crowdsourcing!), and each skill area also has its own questions section. You can also follow other users and view their progress. I don’t know whether there will be opportunities for interaction as well. There is an option to enable Facebook Connect so perhaps that is where you can chat with your new Duolingo friends.

The screen scrape at the top of this post only shows a fraction of the skill areas available. There are 44 in all for Spanish, and it is going to take me quite a while to get through them all. I don’t know what happens after that or how fluent I will be at that point. The lessons do cover all the parts of speech and most verb tenses. I presume that once you get through all the lessons all you do is translate, but perhaps they have other surprises prepared.

One thing I would like to do after getting through the Spanish lessons is to try another language from scratch to see what that is like for a total beginner. I already know some Spanish so the lessons have been quite easy so far. The only other language available right now (other than English) is German, which is fortunately a language I would like to learn. They are also planning to add French, Italian and Chinese (by which I presume they mean Mandarin) in the future. I am not too interested in Italian but I could stand to brush up on my French and I’d love to learn Mandarin. I have the feeling I will be spending a lot of time on Duolingo!

If you want to try Duolingo you can get on the waiting list here. It can take a while to get in (unless you try some creative grovelling like I did), but it’s worth the wait!

For more see Duolingo: Mixing it up.

Library Video Mashup

Anti-social networking

I’m in a bit of a quandary. I love socializing online but it seems that as time goes on the big social networking sites are becoming more and more invasive, controlling, exclusive, and downright anti-social. First it was Facebook with its data mining, online tracking, and ridiculously complex privacy options. Did you know that even if you log out of Facebook it is still tracking your every move online? It can even share your surfing activities unless you figure out how to turn that off. And that’s just today’s trick. Tomorrow they will find a new way to collect data about you and you’ll have to go through the same exercise again if you want to protect your privacy.

Then there is Google+ which initially seemed like a much freer alternative to Facebook, until it turned out that it was designed as an “identity service.” With the recent harmonization of the Google privacy policy, that means that they can now track your activities across the entire Googleverse, as well as any page with a +1 button on it. Add to that the idiotic “real name” policy whereby anyone who tries to sign up with an unusual name or pseudonym can be suspended and their other Google services frozen. You could create a hundred spam accounts with “normal” sounding names with no problem but if your parents were hippies and named you Starflower your account will be flagged and you will be asked to submit government-issued ID. That’s like a coffee shop asking for your passport before letting you chat with your friends. It’s draconian and excludes a lot of people who have perfectly legitimate and sometimes life-and-death reasons for not using their legal name online. Moreover, now you cannot even create a Google account without joining Google+ and providing a “real” name. This applies to Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, the entire Googleverse. If you have anything to say that you do not want publicly associated with your legal name, Google is no longer the place to go.

Now Twitter, which has been credited with helping dissidents under repressive regimes to organize protests, is getting into the censorship business. They have announced that any government that wants to censor tweets on certain subjects or by certain users in their country can do so if they supply the appropriate paperwork. Twitter says “the tweets must flow,” just not the ones that any government finds inconvenient. Some have pointed out that Twitter is being quite transparent about this, compared to some websites (like Yahoo) that censor silently. Tweets won’t just disappear, they will be grayed out with a message that it has been banned in your country. But for a company that garnered such fame by facilitating the Arab Spring to now collaborate with governments to censor on demand seems particularly monstrous. Freedom of expression is a universal human right, not to mention a constitutional right in Twitter’s home country, so why are they denying that right to others?

I seem to have painted myself into a lonely corner with my ethical objections to these giant social networks. There are certainly alternatives. There’s Diaspora, a distributed, open source social network where you fully own and control your own data. It’s great but the problem is that about 99% of the people on it are software developers talking about software development. There is also identi.ca, which is an open source alternative to Twitter, but is also dominated by techie types. There are plenty of great subject-specific web communities out there, but obviously they don’t offer the convenient one-stop-shopping of the big social networks. Then there is the little problem of the good friends I have already made, mainly on Twitter. Just moving on and leaving them behind is not an option.

I honestly don’t know what to do. It does seem as though the free and open internet we used to know and love is being eroded, bit by bit. Both governments and corporations are getting more and more control over what we can do, share, and be online. The question of who owns the internet is being answered by those with the money and political influence to stake a claim in cyberspace. At the same time the open internet movement is strong, and as we saw with the SOPA/PIPA protest, the virtual masses are aware and willing to stand up for a free internet.

I am faced with the age old question of whether to vote with my feet or try to create change from within. I’ve seen some people leave Google+ in protest and others stay to fight the good fight. I cannot say which is better. It remains to be seen what will happen on Twitter after today’s #twitterblackout boycott. Perhaps people will decide to up and leave for identi.ca, Disapora, and other free and open social networks. It doesn’t seem too likely though. It also seems highly unlikely that Twitter would bow to pressure, refuse to censor, and allow itself to get banned in every country that stifles dissent. Those are some pretty big markets we’re talking about.

I guess I will just have to wait and see and try to learn more. I recently started reading the Electronic Frontier Foundation blog, which explores all these issues in detail. At the very least we should be well-informed about the forces that are shaping our online lives.